This website is absolutely one of the most fascinating and amusing one that turns learning a foreign language into sheer enjoyment! What distinguishes this website from others is its simplicity as well as its appealing interface which can be irresistible. One of the most common complaints you would hear from learners these days is one that seems similar to this ‘Our English courses are not contemporary’. This is true to some extent in that some of the materials used in teaching do not take into consideration learners’ interests and their peculiar interests. It is very useful for reinforcing listening, writing, speaking, and grammar skills.
Why to use this website:
1) An extensive resource of songs from the 1960s to this current day. These songs are appropriate to all ages and interests.
2) It has appealing pictures accompanying every video clip so that each learner gets a preview of the song he or she is going to listen to.
3) Each learner can listen to any song an infinite number of times before the actual exercise starts.
4) Learners using this website will unwittingly be subject to a huge amount of exposure to English while they are having fun.
5) Each song has a color-coded tag describing its level. These levels are graded from easy, medium, to hard.
6) Once the learner has pressed the button ‘play’, the game, or learning process, begins.
7) The game is a kind of gap-filling exercise. Each game has three levels of difficulty, namely beginner, intermediate, and expert modes. In the first one, learners have to fill only 10% of the words in the gaps, in the second 25% of the lyrics will be left empty, and in the expert levels learners have to fill in the whole lyrics of the songs.
8) An amazing feature I have recently discovered is the translation tool to almost every possible language you can think of. In other words, you can listen, type, and see the translation of the songs simultaneously. Although this tool would look on the surface similar to an Audio-lingual mode of instruction, it is vastly different. Instead of exposing students to chunks of language that are decontextualised alongside many drilling, students’ active participation is demanded.
9) Learners are sorely tempted to finish each song in order to check their scores, and the time it took them to finish each of these. Then, they can type in their names and the country they came from and check their ranking and timing among many other competitors from different countries all around the world.
10) When students do not recognize what word to fill in the space, they can just move the keyboard arrows up or down in order to navigate though the song. Last but not least, the Karaoke button enables them to look at the lyrics, listen, and sing altogether. Imagine what kind of multi-skillful students we would be looking at.
11) After a learner had finished filling in the missing lyrics, a screen will show him or her the total scores, skipped words, time taken, and time penalty and where they fit in the scoring chart. Learners can always repeat or restart the game if they are not happy with their scores.
Some useful ideas on how to use these in the classrooms:
§ As a first step, I would elicit students’ suggestions about their favorite suggestions to involve them in the learning process. For example, you do not want a group of young teenagers listening to a black-and-white song because they will have a tenuous span of attention if any.
§ Then, I would spark a sense of anticipation by saying ‘Today, you will listen to a song by the end of the lesson if we finish earlier’
§ Next, I would divide them into two teams and play the song on a big screen for everyone to see and every group should assign turns for all its member to go out on the board and write their words.
§ The team that gets more words correct, earns more points, and thereby wins. By doing so, I would have engaged all students in the tasks and crated an interactional activity that prompted students to negotiate, suggest, and make decisions about their learning.
§ This is a great exercise for listening and writing as well.
§ If students have a tie-up or teachers want to expand the lesson, they can ask learners to make a list of the words they learnt from this activity to be put up on the wall for all other class members to see.
§ Like most of the purposeful activities using computers, this one enhances boosts students’ autonomy because all they need is log on to this website which is completely free and play the games or activities.
Very important points to bear in mind:
· Many of these songs use colloquial words that are not academic or standard examples of English.
· Some of these songs could contain offensive words or slangs that might not be appropriate for some learners.
· In my opinion, the most important factor among these is to look at contextual factors. Many learners might not engage with such songs because they are simply not relevant to their culture, or even offensive. While doing some of these, I noticed many gender-biased and racial phrases. The one and only person who can decide which of these songs to use is the teacher. Therefore, it would be helpful for teachers to thoroughly check each of these to avoid any misunderstanding.
No comments:
Post a Comment